There was the Green Monster and there was the Pesky Pole and there was the cubbyhole in the scoreboard where Manny Ramirez used to coop when he got bored, and probably still does, for all we know.

It’s still Fenway Park, no matter what rectangular sidelines are laid down, no matter what kind of no-hands high jinks are performed on the makeshift field.

Football at Fenway. That’s what the organizers called Wednesday’s summer exhibition in which A.S. Roma defeated Liverpool, 2-1, with Michael Bradley of the United States scoring the first goal. Whatever name it goes by, the sport is not a threat to hallowed places like Fenway Park, where the Splendid Splinter used to hit and glower.

However, one of the nice things about this dynamic nation is that there is always room for the next wave. Outside Fenway four hours before the game, Niall O’Brien, 9, was wearing a Gerrard 8 jersey, and his brother, Liam, 11, was wearing a red Liverpool jersey. Their dad, Tony O’Brien, born in Dublin and long a resident of Guilford, Conn., has already taken them for the pilgrimage to Anfield, the fabled home of Liverpool. The boys were all set to sing “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” the Liverpool anthem.

“Everybody here will know the words,” Niall O’Brien predicted. The family had spent over $250 on this day trip in order to make the old park rock with “You’ll Never Walk Alone” rather than “Sweet Caroline,” as is done 81 times a baseball season.

The most common jerseys in this crowd were honoring No. 8, Steven Gerrard of Liverpool, and No. 10, Francesco Totti, the hometown lifer of Roma. Totti was in the starting lineup but Gerrard never got into the match.

On this same lovely summer evening, Major League Soccer, being grown slowly and smartly across the continent, was holding its all-star game outside Philadelphia against touring Chelsea, winner of the Champions League final only two months ago.

These matches are fast becoming a midsummer ritual, the old Grand Tour of Europe in reverse. The multilingual goalie Peter Cech of the Czech Republic and Chelsea is in our midst. The preening coach José Mourinho and Real Madrid are coming to Yankee Stadium on Aug. 8 to play A.C. Milan.

The fans in the United States are not rubes, coming to gawk at high-power squads taking their first tentative midsummer training in public. The world is not what it used to be.

When that wonderful 1992 book by Nick Hornby, “Fever Pitch,” was reworked for American film audiences in 2005, it was unnaturally converted into a drama about a Red Sox zealot, and it fell flat. Less than a decade later, Americans could now handle a movie about Arsenal angst.

“These exhibitions are huge outside of the United States and have been for some time,” John Henry, the principal owner of the Fenway group, wrote in an e-mail early this week. “What seems to be different is the level of interest in America for these matches. This has grown significantly.”

Henry explained the financial appeal of summer soccer: “We know we have a large fan base in America — that is the reason for coming to America. Last year we were in Asia. If you include Malaysia and Indonesia, the fan bases there are enormous. We held a practice that drew almost 40,000 last summer and 84,000 for an exhibition match in Malaysia.”

Photo

A.S. Roma and Liverpool played an exhibition, with Fenway’s Green Monster as a backdrop.Credit
Jared Wickerham/Getty Images

Could Henry imagine North America as the site of official matches involving the best clubs in Europe or Latin America? Or, for that matter, could he envision a European league placing a franchise on the East Coast of the United States, or a Mexican league team being placed in Texas or California?

Henry recalled “some discussion some time ago” about placing league matches in the United States, but added, “I don’t think there was any appetite for such.”

The Fenway owner added: “We have several major sports here that are ingrained and solid. But how much it will grow here? I would say the approach to and through media will play the major role in determining soccer’s success in America.”

Henry was just happy putting two major clubs in Fenway, with nice touches like putting up two faux brick pillars with a steel gate connecting them, bearing the words “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” People in Roma gear and Liverpool gear took pictures under the grillwork.

“It’s a historic club playing in a historic venue against another historic club,” Henry added. “While it’s purely an exhibition, it’s still something very special.”

To be truthful, there is a temporary feel to midsummer matches when the new sod is squatting on dirt basepaths and home plate and the first-base line are left uncovered, no doubt wondering what happened to the rest of the infield.

It is also hard to take a midsummer soccer match seriously when the lads have just come back from those brief vacations from a sport that grinds bodies and minds down to nubs. In the Bronx, Chelsea looked like strangers who needed Hello I Am buttons to introduce themselves.

Everybody knew the two new coaches of Liverpool and Roma were going to use swarms of players, but still, in the midst of a recession, tickets were going for an average of $110, with seats atop the scoreboard going for more than $400 and standing room at $70, according to SeatGeek, the Web ticket service.

One major attraction was Roma’s new midfielder, Bradley, 24, just about the best American player in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. He moved up to Chievo of Verona last year and was recently snapped up by Roma, even higher on the pecking order.

His normal intense work rate paid off Wednesday as he broke through for a 15-yard angled goal in the 63rd minute. Alessando Florenzi scored in the 69th minute for Roma, and Charlie Adam scored in the 80th minute for Liverpool.

Bradley, whose father, Bob, was the American coach and now coaches Egypt, is the highest-placed American player in history, inasmuch as great expats of the current Friedel-Howard-Donovan-Dempsey generation have not quite reached Champions League level, which is the expectation for Roma. Bradley’s ascent is just one more sign that soccer is reaching critical mass in the United States even if the Yanks have their troubles in the World Cup.

Sunil Gulati, president of the United States Soccer Federation, speaks about “signals” of soccer’s incremental rise: the large number of crowds over 50,000 for these midsummer matches; the American television networks, English and Spanish, now presenting international soccer; the rising ratings for the 2010 World Cup and the recent European tournament on ESPN; the placing by Fox of several vital Premier League matches and the Champions League final on the main network rather than its soccer outlet; and the large turnout of American fans for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

“We had more ticket buyers than any other country,” Gulati said Tuesday in a telephone interview. Gulati suggested that the N.B.A. would have a franchise based in Europe well before a European soccer team is based in the United States.

It is all a work in progress. But the summer tour is here to stay, with Italian being spoken in the M.T.A. train and fans in red jerseys marched en masse from a pub, with accompanying bagpipes.

American children wore Gerrard 8 and Totti 10 jerseys, knowing exactly who those people are, as familiar if they were Yaz and Papi themselves. The new wave.

E-mail: geovec@nytimes.com

A version of this article appears in print on July 26, 2012, on page B15 of the New York edition with the headline: Soccer Is Welcome At Home of Sox. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe